You’re in a style rut when your rotation of outfits begins to feel stale and you’re just not liking them the way you used to. You’re bored with your style, and this is precisely when you need to be the most proactive about trying something new. 

Clients often ask for my help in the first place because they’re in a rut with their style. Creating a style that makes you consistently look and feel fabulous is all about accurately identifying your needs and acting on them, so we begin by exploring the following questions:

• What do you want to express through your style?
• What do you NOT aspire to in your style? 
• How does your ideal style differ from your current style?  
• Which are your current favourite wardrobe items, and why do you like wearing them?
• Which outfits have you felt best in lately, and why did they make you feel fab? 

Once you’ve reflected on these questions — and feel free to bounce ideas off friends and family members if you think that will help — begin looking at your style in more detail in order to pinpoint where you need the change. It might be one or several aspects of your style that need attention. 

The extent of the change you need will depend on how much of a rut you’re in. On one end of the continuum, the rut feels intense and overwhelming, and in this case you might find a seven step style renewal to be beneficial. If you’re on the less intense end of the continuum, you’ll find that smaller and faster changes can do the trick. Here are some of my favourites.

Evaluate Your Hair 

Your hair is an important part of your style. For some, it IS their style. Cut it into another shape, add some colour, grow it into another style, activate the curl, straighten the wave, leave it down, tie it up, go lighter, go darker, go shorter, or go grey. 

Refresh Your Accessories & Footwear

Add accessories to your outfits if you previously went without. Wear the jewellery that’s packed away in a box. Add a belt, brooch, tie, hat, textured hosiery or scarf to an outfit. Try a new style or colour of handbag. Swap out your handbags more frequently. Have fun with nail art. Have fun with quirky costume jewellery. Get a new pair of specs. 

Evaluate your footwear and make sure that it’s sufficiently current for your style. It’s amazing how a few pairs of trendy shoes can breathe life into old outfits. 

Tweak Your Make-up

Go to a make-up counter and ask for a make-up makeover. Change the colour of your lipstick. Wear gloss. Add mascara and eyeliner to your daily make-up routine. Wear blue, green or purple mascara. Have your brows professionally shaped and dyed. Add bronzer. Wear blush. 

Revisit the Colour Palette of Your Wardrobe 

If you’re a neutral gal, try wearing NEW-to-you neutrals. Add some colour, even if it’s in a subtle way, like through an accessory. Or don’t be subtle at all. Break out of your comfort zone and add new colours to your wardrobe, but be sure to purchase them with a support act so that you can easily create outfits. 

If you’re a non-neutral gal, experiment with neutrals. Wear neutral outfits and monochromatic combinations. Combine tonal neutrals instead of high-contrast ones. Wear four to five different neutrals in one outfit. Or wear one neutral from head to toe. 

Try New-to-You Trends on the Cheap

This is an effective way to change up your look without breaking the bank. Choose new-to-you trends that tickle your fancy and purchase them at relatively inexpensive prices. Target the items that you would have previously ignored if you were feeling energized by your current wardrobe. You’ll be amazed at how integrating a few well-chosen trendier pieces can change up the landscape of your wardrobe.    

Create Dramatic Outfit Juxtapositions  

Take the time to play dress up at home by combining your wardrobe items in different ways. Ask a style-savvy friend to help out if the process seems daunting. Put on some music, have snacks on hand, and let the creative juices flow. Create clashing colour combinations, new tonal combinations, and outfits that are just flattering enough. Put together outfits with new proportions and with unexpected footwear choices. And don’t forget to accessorize. 

Think Beyond Jeans

It’s easy to fall back on wearing jeans for every occasion because we live in a casual world. But there is life after jeans. Think trousers, skirts, dresses, jumpsuits and casual pants if you’re bored of wearing jeans. Or at least think beyond blue jeans by wearing them in black, grey, white or another colour. 

Dress Up! 

This is one of the most effective ways of breaking out of a style rut, but it’s hard to do when your lifestyle is casual. It does feel good to get out of jeans and a T-shirt for at least some of the time. Amp up the dressiness of your daily outfits, which might mean wearing the items in your wardrobe that you save for special occasions. Neutralize the dressy pieces by wearing them with denim. Wear the dressier skirts and frocks that are begging for some action because why not! Start stepping up your game by being the dressiest person in the room. Defying your environmental norm can be the best way to break out of a style rut. 

I’ve had my fair share of style ruts, and I’m going to have many more. Sometimes I can break out of my rut with a few quick fixes, and sometimes I need to look deeper into my head and heart in order to pinpoint precisely why I’m bored with my style. Either way, the reflection pays off. 

There is no one correct way to build your wardrobe colour palette. Unless you’re in the very unusual situation of starting a wardrobe from scratch and building it all in one go, your palette will evolve organically over time through an intuitive process. That said, it is definitely worthwhile to give the colour palette of your wardrobe some thought so that the items work together to create cohesive outfits that make you feel fab.

Helping clients with their wardrobe palettes is a fascinating aspect of my work. I find that palettes differ quite a bit from one client to another, and seldom do they mirror my own. Over the years I’ve found that being in touch with the way colours make you feel, assessing your affinity for colour mixing, identifying your important neutrals and colours, and being deliberate when adding a new colour to your wardrobe, are all important parts of mastering your wardrobe palette.

Listen to Your Emotions 

The colour of a wardrobe item can make us feel happy, sad, confident, blah, serious, playful, powerful, weak, energetic, anxious or alluring. LISTEN to these emotions and make sure that the emotion associated with the colour of a particular wardrobe item is the right one. 

Do a little soul searching with colour because it’s not always as straightforward as it seems. You may love a colour in theory — like magenta — but feel off when wearing it as a wardrobe item. Or perhaps it’s a question of sporting a particular colour in the right smaller dose — like through an accessory. Explore how colours make you feel on a regular basis because this does change over time. 

Assess Your Affinity to Colour Mixing

The more willing you are to combine unexpected and clashing colours together in an outfit, the easier it is to manage a wardrobe with a large assortment of colour. 

In other words if your affinity for colour mixing is high, you’ll happily combine all sorts of weird and wonderful colours into an outfit and feel fab. Because you like wearing a wide assortment of colours and in unconventional combinations, you feel in control of a wardrobe that is steadily increasing in colour possibilities. This is not the case when your affinity for colour mixing is low. In this case a wardrobe full of colour will be overwhelming. The colour combinations that tickle your fancy will be narrower, so it will be a good idea to limit the range of colours in your wardrobe. 

Identify Your Favourite Neutrals

Identifying which neutrals work best for your complexion and style creates a foundation that can be mixed and matched with other neutrals and non-neutral colours.

It’s important to choose a range of neutrals — from dark to light — because some neutrals work better with non-neutrals than others. For example, whites and tans work particularly well with pastels. Dark neutrals work well with brights and jewel tones. And chocolate and cognac work well with earth tones.   

If you like to keep it very simple, choose a dark, mid-tone and light neutral as the backbone of your wardrobe. Stick to these neutrals and don’t add another unless you’re prepared to move out of your comfort zone when styling neutrals in outfits. 

Again, if your affinity for colour mixing is high, you’ll effectively build a wardrobe with a larger assortment of neutrals. For example, there is no need to choose between dark neutrals like black, chocolate, charcoal and ink blue when you like wearing them together in an outfit or styling them with a large range of non-neutrals. The same holds true for mid-tone and light neutrals. 

Identify Your Favourite Colours 

Most people also enjoy wearing a range of non-neutral colours, even if the range is very small. Identify the colours that work with your complexion and make those the permanent colours in your wardrobe. Having a dark, mid-tone and light neutral to work with them will increase the outfit combinations you can create. 

You might find that you wear colours seasonally, in which case you need to ensure that you have the right neutrals to support the wardrobe colour spectrum that changes with the seasons. 

In the rare instance that you ONLY wear neutrals, you can skip this step entirely. Building a wardrobe that consists solely of neutrals can be done if those are the only colours that create a positive emotion for you. 

Think in Capsules When Adding a New Colour 

It is inevitable that our style will evolve over time, and that is a good thing. It also means that you will be introducing new colours to your wardrobe from time to time. But you have to be mindful about how you’re going to integrate that new colour into your outfits. Ask yourself whether you already have the neutral and non-neutral items to wear with the new colour. If not, purchase the new colour with a support act. Perhaps you need to purchase more than one item in the new colour in order to create cohesive outfits.   

For example, a dark neutral and jewel tone-loving client of mine wanted to add blush to her wardrobe for Spring. In order to make the blush work well in outfits, she also needed to purchase a few more separates in white and blush, as well as tan and silver shoes and bag. Having invested in a support act of light neutrals, it opened the door to add new colours like mint and lilac quite effortlessly because they also worked well with the white, tan and silver.

As I mentioned at the outset, building the colour palette of your wardrobe can be intuitive, which means that some of you are following these steps without giving them a lot of thought. This is especially true for those who have a high affinity for colour mixing. 

Just when you have it all figured out, your colour preferences will change. And so the thought process starts all over again, making our wardrobes a perpetual work in progress.

After stumbling upon The Lingerie Addict’s post about their favourite brands of 2014 — check out those silk robes by Meng — I thought it would be fun to round up a few lingerie-related links this week:

• Since Aerie, American Eagle’s lingerie brand, has stopped airbrushing its models, sales have gone up by 21%.
• Vogue found some pretty lingerie just in time for engagement season.
• Yahoo! Style contributor Nora Crotty tells us what she learnt from wearing a bullet bra to work.
• London-based lingerie company CheekFrills teamed up with model Carolyn Murphy for a lingerie collection in naturally sourced fabrics.
• If you’re buying lingerie as a gift for someone else these pointers might come in handy.

Fab Links from Our Members

Joy would love to go see the Native Fashion Now exhibition that, with nearly 100 works, “celebrates the visual range, creative expression and political nuance of Native American fashion.”

Shevia thought the Denim: Fashion’s Frontier exhibit at the Museum at FIT looks interesting too.

Sally shares how to style sequins for the holidays. Subdued sparkle or all-out glam is up to you, Angie agrees, but above all have fun with your look!

Deb loved this Guardian article that asks if ironing is a thing of the past. Are you also a “domestic dissenter”?

Vildy enjoyed this interview with Brunello Cucinelli, in which the Italian fashion designer shares tips on how to wear pale colours.

Nothing beats the simplicity of a dress. Pull it on, add footwear, hosiery, topper and clutch, and Bob’s your uncle. Of course the hardest part here is finding a frock that you like, and making sure that you don’t feel self-conscious about lumpage and bumpage. Not to mention that most of us want it to be adequately warm and cozy for this time of year. 

Knitted dresses in substantial fabrications, sweater dresses, A-line dresses with handkerchief hems, and sack dresses get my vote for maximum comfort. Make these styles of dress the base of your holiday look this year and finish them off with a festive touch. 

Here are two outfit formulas to get you started with the concept. In the spirit of being traditional, I’ve chosen a classic black, white, red, tan and gold palette. But you can choose any colour palette, as long as your footwear is festive. 

Sweater Dress & Coat

Combine a sweater dress with a fun coat. Fit-and-flares, sack silhouettes, and A-line sweater dresses are particularly comfortable. Add pumps, heeled booties or tall boots for footwear. Finish off the look with hose and sparkle. 

Sheath & Statement Wrap

Combine a simple sheath dress with a dramatic wrap or poncho. Choose a solid or patterned topper. The type of topper can stay on indoors so you don’t need to worry about losing outfit drama. Add pumps, heeled booties or dressy taller boots for footwear. Finish off the look with hose, sparkle and plenty of good cheer.